GIS Ed Weekly: Should SLU faculty train spies and warfighters?

COVID-19 Mapping 

College Crisis: Davidson College started  The College Crisis Initiative (C2i) "to learn how colleges and universities innovate in a crisis mindset." First up is a dashboard covering college education delivery plans during the pandemic. I first heard about the initiative via NPR, which has its own set of visualizations on college COVID-19 testing.

LinkedIn: Tanya Berger-Wolf, the director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute at OSU notes on LinkedIn that the Ohio State University was the only institution to receive an “A+” for its COVID19 dashboard according to We Rate Covid Dashboards, a website that rates college and university COVID dashboards. The team includes a number of students and faculty from Yale and other schools though it's unclear to me if they created the rubric or assigned the scores. I'm curious who is behind the site. If I had to guess I'd say tableau.

GIS Education Weekly: Tips for GeoMentors and New Mentoring Program

Resources for Teaching and Learning

NY Times: Those Hurricane Maps Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean - Alberto Cairo wrote this opinion piece. It's getting lots of play in the geo and cartography space.

Twitter: Regional pronunciations that immediately out you as a newcomer - Ryan Beckwith from Bloomberg and others provide examples. I'll share one: Milan, Illinois.

GIS Education Weekly: Gender and Gender Balance

Men and Women in Geospatial

GEO Business included this graphic with
its press release.

There were two "discussions" on gender in cartography this week and a press release on "gender balance" that may be valuable conversation starters.

GIS Education Weekly: Previews of Data Visualization and Spatial Data Science Books

Resources for Teaching and Learning (and impacting Parkinson's)

The Morning Call: Map: See where federal workers in Pennsylvania live, what they earn without a shutdown  - An interesting map to consider. How might it be improved?

Map Music Mapped - Celebrity Cruises created a map of the U.S. and U.K. top hits mentioning cities from 1960 onward. The top city is New York. I'm reading a biography of Paul Simon, so I confirmed that The Boxer was there ("where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me, leading me, going home.") Forbes contributor Duncan Madden wrote about the map very likely based on this press release from two days earlier. The map debuted in November 2018.

GIS Education Weekly: Changes in National Geographic's Alliance Network

The Future of the National Geographic Alliance Network 

From what I understand, the National Geographic Society held a meeting at the NCGE conference earlier this month to discuss changes in the Alliance program. Lara Bryant, the New Hampshire Alliance Coordinator, explained the changes in the organization's newsletter.

Now, National Geographic is re-affirming their commitment to geography education... through a highly interactive and integrated community that includes educators, explorers, storytellers, and photographers. 

National Geographic is moving toward a model that will provide full-time National Geographic staff in each of six regions across the country.

GIS Education Weekly: Introducing Spatial Thinking to K-5 Students, MOOC, How Much Coding?

Students work with puzzles
in the STEM+C project

Spatial at the NSF STEM for ALL Video Showcase

The University of Redlands wants you to vote for its Spatial STEM+C video voting page so it can win a Public Choice Award in the NSF 2016 STEM for ALL Video Showcase. "Spatial STEM+C is an exploratory integration project that is introducing K-5 students to spatial thinking as a way of improving computational thinking and mathematical performance. This video will provide a glimpse into the process of developing and pilot testing curricular activities for the project." Last year the GRACE program won a Public Choice Award.

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Resources

USGS National Geospatial Program Director Mike Tischler was featured on Sunday's CBS Sunday Morning news program. He speaks about the National Geographic Bee, emphasizes the importance of geographic knowledge, and gives a shout out to USGS mapping. h/t Mark at USGS

GIS Education Weekly: Situated Learning, Certification, Data Science

Your Kids are not Geographers, That's Exactly Why They must to Know How to Think Spatially

I think that article needs to be written. It parallels one titled Your Kids Aren't Robots, And That's Exactly Why They Must Know How To Code in Forbes this past week. The argument is that younger students need to learn computational thinking when young in the context of other learning. Some geography educators have similar ideas about integrating spatial thinking into other subjects like history, social studies, science and math. Only later, in high school, suggests author Muhammed Chaudhry, should the formally learn to code.

GIS Careers Infographic

A bit of the infographic

GIS User shared an infographic on GIS careers a few weeks ago:

The University of Southern California’s GIS Program and Pearson Education have put together an infographic titled “Common Career Paths for the Student of Geographic Information Science & Technology”.

The resource is not dated, but the source page is (c) 2013. I was surprised the infographic does not include data from Oxera or Boston Consulting Group reports from 2013. I was curious how Pearson was involved, so I contacted USC.

Associate Director of the Spatial Sciences Institute from Susan H. Kamei responded.

This infographic was prepared by Pearson for our online USC Graduate Programs in Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) in 2013, with the sources that were identified at that time.  Pearson provides certain recruitment and student support services to our online programs.

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GIS Education Weekly: APHG Exam Infographic, Geo for All Renewed, Resources for Esri-focused Educators

2015 Edition ~ AP Human Geography Free-Response Questions and Exam Breakdown

Bit of the infographic

This excellent infographic from Human Imprint details current and historic data on the AP Human Geography exam scores, test taker numbers, topics covered and more. via @professordixon 

NSF Renews Spatial Archeology Program 

The National Science Foundation has renewed its funding for the Spatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations Program, an initiative at the University of Arkansas that acts as a national hub for geospatial research in archaeology.

The $277,264 grant allows the program, known as SPARC, to continue...

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GIS Education Weekly: GEOINT Certification, Teaching Resources, AP Geography/GIS&T

Kids Map It

Gretchen Peterson and Bright Rain Solutions created Kids Map It, a simple tool for mapping. It uses a drag and drop paradigm and is built on open source. I'm sure input from educators would be appreciated.

USGIF GEOINT Certification

A very long article in Trajectory (USGIF's magazine) details its plans for individual GEOINT certification that will launch this fall. It's called the Universal GEOINT Certification and will be available to U.S. and international GEOINT practitioners in multiple industries, military, academia, and federal, state, and local government jobs.

Bottom line:

USGIF’s Universal GEOINT Certification is designed for GEOINT professionals across the globe with at least three to five years of real-world experience and a working understanding of physical and human geography. To achieve certification, candidates must pass a series of rigorous exams based on the fundamentals of remote sensing, GIS, data management, and data visualization.

2015 Undergraduate Geospatial Technology Skills Competition Deadline Now June 19

The deadline was originally last Friday; now it's tomorrow. Last minute entrants can find details here. Last year's contest was ultimately cancelled. I hope that does not happen again!

GIS Certificate: $2,400 and Four Saturdays

If I read this press release and this website correctly, you can get a GIS certificate from Cal Poly Pamona for just $2,400. Students take four classes at $600 each; two are required and two are electives (though only two electives are available, as I write this). Each one is taught on a single Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm. The required courses use Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop and the electives use Getting to Know ArcObjects, Programming ArcGIS with VBA (?) and the Esri Virtual Campus resources.


I appreciate that Cal Poly Pamona is straightforward about what the short program can and can't do.

This certificate program is intended for prospective non-specialist GIS users in a variety of professional settings. The certificate is not intended to prepare full-time GIS specialists, but rather to impart useful and necessary GIS skills to analysts, planners and managers in the wide range of fields that require location or planning decisions, resource management/allocation decisions or spatial optimization of networks, routes or systems.

I'm pleased so many schools are offering GIS courses, certificates and degrees. I think having a variety of face-to-face, online, hybrid and other ways to teach and learn are key to getting the word out to as many potential practitioners as possible. The variety of options means that both students and hiring managers need to do their homework.

Students need to remember that old adage, "if something looks too good to be true..." In short, a program that is short and inexpensive may not deliver the same content, teach the same skills or have the same impact on a hiring manager. That said, I think such offerings can be great introductions and/or stepping stones to further self-study or more formal study of GIS.

The real challenge for those on the hiring side is to be sure distinguish between the kinds of skills acquired and degrees conferred by such programs. A "GIS certificate" may be open to anyone and hus is taught to address those with a variety of backgrounds. The Cal Poly Pamona program falls into this group. A "post baccalaureate certificate" means a bachelor's degree is a pre-requisite and the courses are aimed at individuals with that level of educational experience. Some programs even count such coursework towards a Masters (Penn State and Denver for two).

Making Sense of Certificates, Certification and Badges: A Hiring Manager's Guide

You might have seen image posted on SlashGeo.

 It prompted the Twitter conversation below.

I don't  believe the writer who posted the certificate misrepresented how one can complete a (free) Esri course and receive such a certificate. And, I'm not sure if Mr. Fee was really confused about the difference between a certificate of completion and Esri's formal, test-based Associate and Professional Certifications. 

But the interchange does highlight how a potential employer, especially one not conversant in the GIS/Esri/Education lingo regarding GIS recognition, might be. Employers would need to know about certificates of completion (like the one above, saying a course was completed), industry certifications (GISP, ASPRS), educational institutions' certificate programs (Penn State Post Baccalaureate Certificate), and vendor certifications (Esri's Certification program).

Free Education, Badges and other Credentials

And, now of course, we have a whole new set of credentials that may make their way to GIS: badges (for example from Mozilla or Khan Academy) and letters from instructors for those who participate in massive online classes (for example, the Stanford AI class). All of these (mostly free) learning and credential collecting opportunities tend to have as part of their mission making "education available to all." Khan Academy basically adds the term "world class" to that to define its mission statement. I can find no fault with efforts to bring education to all.

There are many issues to be resolved with badges and other credentials; I want to set that aside for right now and focus on these free learning opportunities. Who are they for? Ideally, they are for anyone who wants to learn something "new." Audrey Watters (my favorite edtech writer/podcaster) is currently taking a massive online Python course. Among her fellow students? Those who program in Python for a living! Moreover, she reports that in the course forums there wasn't quite the respect for "newbie" questions as she might hope. Why are working professionals taking the course? I can only guess, but fear one reason might be to gain the credential at the end. It's a way, as the SlashGeo poster put it, to "help you pimp your resume." 

Advice for Hiring Managers

Pity the overworked hiring manager who gets a pile of resumes and has to navigate all these certificates, certifications and badges! What is he or she to do? Ask a lot of questions. 

If the applicant hasn't provided a reference to explain the nature of credential (say a link to the GISCI website), the employer should ask about it either in a phone or personal interview. Ask the applicant who granted the credential, what is means, what was required to attain it and why they pursued it. 

That last one is key and can reveal a lot about the applicant. I'd love to hear an applicant who took one of Esri's free three hour classes explain they did so because they were taking a university course that included the topic and didn't quite understand the key points. I'd love to hear that an applicant was working on a project (for work, school, or on their own) and needed to know how to do that specific thing to complete it. Other answers, such as "I don't know," "I don't remember," or "to pad my resume" would not be as promising.

As more and new types of credentials appear on resumes, hiring managers, the consumers of those documents, have to dig deeper to tease out their value. Alternatively, they could ignore the credentials and administer a test or assignment to see if the applicant has the skills.

What Geospatial Practitioners Need to Know About the New SPACE Certification

On Tuesday the title of this press release prompted a few articles and tweets: "Digital Quest Announces New National, Industry-Backed Geospatial Certification." I want to unpack this for those who are thinking "Oh no! Not another certification!" This is really in yet another category than the GISP from GISCI, the Esri Technical Certification from Esri, and the the very technical certifications from ASPRS.

First off, who is Digital Quest?
It's a company that develops GIS teaching tools. "Digital Quest is a Mississippi-based development- and training-oriented company enabling educational institutions to provide their students with skill-based training in the growing, vital field of geospatial technology."

Digital Quest already implements a certification program, called Spatial Technology And Remote Sensing aka STARS, developed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeship. About 300 people are STARS certified; ideally they are prepared for entry level geospatial work after completing a four semester program and an exam. The STARS certification course set is offered, for example at Atlantic Cape Community College (certification Q&A). The program is aligned with the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM). The courses are taught with Esri software; Esri is a Digital Quest partner.

So, what the new SPACE certification?
Spatial Projects And Community Exchange, aka SPACE, "applies geospatial technology to real, local, community-based projects." The educational program can be taken in a classroom, at work or at home. The twist? "The SPACE series teaches GIS through the eyes of the businesses and government agencies that protect, and increase the efficiency of, citizens’ everyday lives." Students tackle GIS in economic development, homeland security, law enforcement and other areas. Like its sibling, it aligns with the GTCM. The progression, per the press release, suggests this certification precedes the tougher STARS certification, which itself can precede professional certification.

What industry backing?
The Enterprise for Geospatial Solutions (EIGS), Mississippi Enterprise for Technology (MsET), and the Magnolia Business Alliance (MBA) back the certifications. (On the Digital Quest website the term "sponsored" is used.) Those are regionally focused groups, so its possible those in outside the southeast are not familiar with them.

How does this certification impact someone working toward a GIS or geotechnology certificate or degree?
Both of Digital Quest's certification have their own curricula. Most schools currently offer their own certificates or degrees, based on their own curricula (and in time perhaps, these programs will align with the GTCM). Digital Quest notes the difference between its certification and GIS certificate programs here.

How does this certification impact schools looking to teach geotechnology?
It's certainly one way to implement a new geospatial program in a high school or community college, especially one with instructors who are new to geospatial technology. The tagline of Digital Quest is "creating teacher friendly curriculum for the geospatial industry."